Qatar Deporting Dutch Woman Who Reported She Was Drugged And Raped

She was convicted of having sex out of wedlock and given a one-year suspended sentence.

DOHA, QATAR - DECEMBER 29: The West Bay skyline of Doha, Qatar's capital city, as seen from the Corniche ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar on December 29, 2015 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

Warren Little/Getty Images
A Qatari court convicted a Dutch woman of having sex out of wedlock and gave her a one-year suspended sentence after she reported being drugged and raped.

DOHA, June 13 (Reuters) - A Dutch woman who was arrested in March after she told police she had been drugged and raped was convicted of having sex out of wedlock by a Qatari court on Monday and given a one-year suspended sentence, state-owned Al Jazeera reported.

The woman, 22, will be deported to the Netherlands in the coming days once the ruling is formalized, the Dutch ambassador to Qatar Yvette Burghgraef-van Eechoud told the network.

The man she said raped her, a Syrian identified in court as Omar Abdullah Al-Hasan, pleaded guilty to charges of illicit consensual sex and being drunk in a public and was sentenced to 140 lashes, Al Jazeera quoted a court official as saying.

Islamic-based legal codes govern Qatar, which will host the World Cup in 2022 and faces questions on how it will cope with the influx of many fans who drink alcohol at soccer tournaments and may expect lenient Western-style rules.

The Dutch woman says she was drugged at a nightclub in a central Doha hotel and realized she had been raped when she woke up in an unfamiliar apartment.

"Her next memory was waking up in an unfamiliar apartment where she realized to her great horror that she had been raped," her lawyer, Brian Lokollo, told Dutch radio NOS-Radio 1.

She had been on vacation at the time, and reported the incident to Qatari police. She was arrested on March 14, and had been held since then on unclear charges.

Hasan has acknowledged having sex with the woman, but said it had been consensual, according to Dutch media reports.

Since the case emerged this week, hundreds of sympathizers on Twitter have called for her release and criticized the Qatari reaction to her allegations.

It is an offense to drink alcohol or be drunk in public in Qatar, although alcohol is allowed at certain hotels and non-Muslim immigrants can obtain a permit for purchasing alcohol.